For reference, I'm a Conceal Operative. I'm the one who got nerfed, and I'm saying that the unexpected bonus we just received couldn't possibly have been intentional. The devs just aren't that good at this. The in-game complaints are already getting deafening this morning, although I'll bet some of that is from people still using their CC breaker on the 1.5s stun instead of waiting to use it on the 4s one instead. (Note to complainers: to activate that 4s stun, I have to take an action that costs me a GCD. Thats another second and a half that you're NOT getting stabbed, another second and a half in which a teammate could heal you or stun me.) Hence my statement that they'll use this as an excuse to overhaul the Resolve system itself. And no, just because we get nerfed into oblivion does not mean that other classes NEED to be reworked. It just means that they SHOULD be reworked. Would it be silly for a 1.5s stun to fill the Resolve bar, when other classes' short stuns don't do the same? Sure, but what other classes try to string so many stuns together in such a short time? If they had our 1.5s give a full Resolve bar, it'd stop our combo cold (as was clearly intended), which is all they really care about.

Yeah, sorry guys, but there's no way this isn't a bug. There's just no chance that they'll allow for a 5.5s stun (7 if you CS+HS again), even with the lowered HS damage. Give it a day or two for the Sorcerers to REALLY complain, and we'll get a hotfix that prevents this from working somehow. I wouldn't be surprised, honestly, to see us be the impetus for an overhaul of the Resolve system itself. But in the short term, they'll probably settle for increasing the knockdown resolve back up towards the max.

See, the fun part of these discussions is that while we all feel many of the Op heals need a little something extra, and people might even agree on what sorts of things the class needs most, we can have very, very different ideas on exactly WHAT each power should get. For instance: Add a "Reactive Healing" component to KInfusion, where the target gets a buff for ~15s that heals him by a small amount (say, up to 200 points at max level/gear) when he takes damage (cap at once per 1.5s). Against a target taking lots of damage, like the main tank, this could add up to 2000 extra HP, which isn't a tremendous amount in the greater scheme of things but would at least make it noticeably superior to either Kolto Injection or Surgical Probe when used on a main tank taking constant damage. Make DS, upon successful completion of its 3s channel, give the target a temporary buff where all heals cast on him (including KP ticks) for the following 12 seconds have a +10% chance to crit, doubled to +20% if the heal in question is Surgical Probe. So instead of just being a no-energy heal, it'd be what you use to prep for the BIG heals. Allow Patient Studies to give you +1/+2 energy whenever you get a crit on DS (as it does currently), Kolto Probe (meaning a crit each tick), OR Recuperative Nanotech. (Maybe double it for RN.) Or, instead of putting RN on that list, I'd like to see the Nanotech heal be "transmittable", where for ~5 seconds it will spread to any friendly who comes within 4m (melee range) of someone who has been healed with it (and immediately heal them for the full amount), but that you can't be affected by it again for some time (say 20s) has passed. In theory, on a large 16-man operation you could have one RN cast perpetually cycling itself around the group that way for free, but realistically it'd be a way to use RN to heal the full group in a somewhat unpredictable way. Make Shield Probe castable on others, where it'd stack with both the shield chance and absorption of any shields they already have. This'd make it GREAT to cast on shield-using classes. Make Evasion work on tech and force attacks. As for speed, yes, fix the talent, but also increase the talent in the Conceal tree to be +10% per rank instead of +5%, OR just give all Operatives a flat +10% to their permanent run speed. We don't need to sprint like the other classes, but even a small difference in base run speed would have huge consequences. See? We can come up with all sorts of ideas. Now all we need is for a developer to pay attention to us...

I'd guess that they just don't care that much. The game's code is obviously already capable of keying abilities off the target's creature type (as with our breakable stuns vs. droids and non-droids) or strength (the weak/normal/strong/elite bit), so it shouldn't be hard to have Acid Blade, for instance, give a +50% buff when the target is an NPC and a +30% buff when the target is a player. (Or even just make it +50% when the target is weak/normal and +30% when it's strong or higher, since all players are treated as Elites IIRC). But they won't, because that'd be more work, both for the initial implementation and for any balance assessments down the road; a lot of games have resisted the idea of having two separate PvP and PvE versions of key abilities, simply due to this. It's not a new phenomenon. PvP is all about marginal differences; one class being even slightly stronger than another can be the difference between dying and escaping with 10% of your health, which will obviously make a large difference in the final results. Whereas, in PvE there's much more of a buffer where "good enough" is the rule of thumb, and even a slightly weaker character can still contribute; only in high-end raiding is there any similar need for the absolute best of everything, and we're already seeing Operatives get rejected from that sort of content. It's not like Operatives will suddenly be unable to solo the normal game content after this nerf, so they probably see the PvE reduction as not a big deal.

Not only that, it only affects level 36+ Operatives, and two of the three changes only affect those who chose to specialize in the Concealment tree. Only the reduction in Hidden Strike's damage affects non-Conceal types, and do you see many Medicine Ops starting a combat with a melee-range stab from stealth? Of course not. So if you just want to play an IA for the story, there are still five advanced specs that won't be significantly affected by these changes.

The problem is that generating TA at a distance is just really strong, unless it's tied to an ability with a long timer or one which has a less than 100% chance of giving the TA (like the Collateral Strike TA for Conceal types). I suggested this in another thread, but how about these: 1> the Counterstrike talent (Lethalty, T5), which makes Countermeasures give you a temporary immunity to snares and roots, would also generate a TA point when used. It's a 45s timer, so this by itself wouldn't be enough. Which brings us to: 2> Escape Plan (Lethality, T6) would also give you a 50/100% chance of gaining a TA point upon leaving Stealth. Once the fight's started you wouldn't be able to do much to get TAs back without popping your 3-minute Cloaking Screen or closing to melee range, but it'd allow you to start each fight with a TA stored up. Actually, I'd like to see the Countermeasures thing be added to the base ability. CM is, for obvious reasons, a useless ability in PvP, so giving it something universally useful to all specs would be nice, and you KNOW the Medicine folks could use all the TAs they can get. Even on a 45s timer, giving us all three specs a way to generate a point of TA instantly would make a huge difference in our gameplay.

Yeah, I get that. The part that gets me is that if the devs really wanted us to still be the designated anti-mage class, and wanted our damage to still be burst-y but not quite SO burst-y, then there are plenty of ways they could have changed us to make us good at that role, without harming our PvE effectiveness. We've all posted ideas in various threads, but obviously the devs haven't read any of those. Instead, they took the two trademark Concealment powers and ripped them apart in the name of PvP balance. If we're not supposed to be able to do what we did before, then what ARE we supposed to be able to do?

I've said it before; it's not just that they're nerfing a class purely for PvP reasons, despite the effect it'll have on PvP. It's not that these changes were put on the PTS barely a day after 1.1 went live, meaning they couldn't possibly have had any good metrics claiming that Operatives were still overpowered in PvP. It's that concealment operatives had a single, well-defined niche, and this change is effectively a referendum on that entire playstyle. Operatives were the Scissors to the casters' Paper. If we're not supposed to be able to kill a lightly-armored player 1-on-1 more often than not, then what niche are we supposed to fill?

And it's not SUPPOSED to work in PvP. Its tooltip explicitly says that it only works on weak/normal/strong enemies. Players are mechanically equivalent to the Elite (gold star) enemies, if I remember correctly. ----- As to the original topic, Evasion needs a lot of work because often, that 3s comes and goes with no real effect even if the attackers WERE using non-tech attacks. Now, I'd like if they made it more multidimensional; let's take Countermeasures, Evasion, and Escape and roll them into two abilities instead of three. So Escape is a CC breaker, speed boost, and an aggro reducer once you hit 30 (the old level for Countermeasures), while Evasion is a defense boost, aggro reducer, and debuff remover once you hit level 24 (Avoidance Training). (The "Counterstrike" talent in the Lethality tree would modify Evasion now.) Or, at least make the existing talents more useful. Take that Counterstrike talent; for two skill points it makes Countermeasures remove snares and roots, but what if it did that AND added a point of Tactical Advantage? Suddenly the Lethality folks would finally have a way to generate TAs without entering melee range. Or maybe Vanish now causes Evasion to work against Tech and Force attacks as well, which'd nicely eliminate the chief complaint about it.

Of course. No one's complaining or threatening to quit after losing to a Sorcerer or Mercenary. No matter what they're saying about "metrics", we're getting nerfed because it'd make the majority of the active players happy. No one likes dying in a quick burst of damage with no chance to defend themselves; the fact that they CAN defend themselves with a trinket, CC breaker, and any kind of root or stun is irrelevant. (And in a sense, it SHOULD be irrelevant; you shouldn't have to deliberately hold back all of those things on the off chance a stealthed player decides to make you his target.) This is the most unfortunate part of this whole thing. If they wanted to reduce the helplessness of someone receiving an Operative's burst, there are ways to do that without making the class weaker; my suggestion was to replace Jarring Strike's 3s knockdown effect with a 6s "Daze" effect that makes all of the target's abilities take 1 second longer to activate. (No more instacast shields/heals!) If they wanted to reduce our raw burst damage, there are ways to do that without lowering our overall DPS, like changing some of our knife attacks to be less upfront damage but add bleed/poison DoTs. And so on. They COULD have tried to make this a balance-neutral change, but instead they're taking an already unpopular class and nerfing it.

Better yet, the target can't be healed at all for 3s after the KP explodes, by you or anyone else; you'd have to decide whether it's worth creating a window of vulnerability to get that burst of group healing, instead of having it always be a no-brainer to cast at the end of the KP duration. I'd still prefer, though, if they made Medicine's niche being that of efficiency over strength. I previously suggested giving KP the same energy-on-crit effect that DS gets from the Patient Studies talent, to make it a very energy-efficient heal on the main tank, simply to do this; the Op healer might not have the area-effect healing or sustainable burst healing of the other healer classes, but if they can do their job without much of an energy expenditure then it opens the door for a lot of "hybrid" gameplay. (Between healing ticks, stab someone!) It helps that the low-tier talents in all three trees are pretty universally useful, to where all three Op specs can boost Cunning, crit rate, healing received, shiv damage, and so on; unfortunately this still isn't as useful as a Sage/Sorcerer healer's ability to nuke between heals, but it's something. I keep wondering what we're going to do when the level cap is raised and we all get 5 or 10 extra Talent points to spend. (Will we see hybrid Medicine/Conceals that have both Acid Blade and Kolto Probe, where once their burst damage is dealt they can shift to a healer role?)

Go to the Public Test Server forum. It's got a patch notes sticky in it, showing the latest version on the test server.

Shadows/Assassins have, in the first tier of their stealth-centric talent trees, a talent that boosts their force regeneration by 25%/50% while in stealth AND for a few seconds after leaving stealth. So for them, it's actually useful to stealth before a fight starts, even when they're not using some stealth-based opener. Op healers, not so much; I was in an FP group last night as a Conceal Op, where one of my teammates was a Medicine Op. I'd stealth before every fight, of course, but he didn't ever stealth; there just wasn't a point to it as he'd gain nothing and he was better off spending his time stacking KPs. So the real question is, if being able to stealth is one of the big advantages of being an Operative, then why isn't there a motivation for healing/lethality Ops to do so for more than just an emergency escape? How about this: add a talent, high up in the Medicine tree, that says that while in stealth and for 6 seconds after leaving stealth, your maximum Energy is 5/10 higher than normal. This'd let you effectively store up a little extra for the start of fights, making it harder to drop below 60% energy in burst healing. (Each tree should have something like this, I think, something that modifies the base Stealth ability. Conceal folks could have a talent that makes their stealth not break on damage for the first 6 seconds after entering stealth, to help with Cloaking Screen uses after dealing their burst, while Lethality folks could have something like "leaving stealth gives you a point of Tactical Advantage" to help them start their attack rotations at range.) I've suggested this one before: make Patient Studies (the talent that gives DS energy on crits) do the same to Kolto Probe as well. So if your KP crits a pulse on a target (and only if it's actually healing damage when it does so), you'd get energy back. Depending on whether the enemy is using AoEs, you might actually gain more energy in the process of rolling your HoTs than you spent placing them, which'd free up a lot of energy to spam the more expensive heals. -------------- As to the OP, I'd comment on the Conceal points, but those have been talked to death. I'd be perfectly okay with a nerf to our bursts if the devs gave us some sustained DPS to compensate, but we're a one-note class that's having that one note destroyed. If they just turned one of our knife attacks into a DoT effect, it'd reduce our burst while giving us better sustained damage; for instance, imagine if Shiv did 90% of its current damage, but the Lethality talent that currently adds 5/10% to Shiv damage now added a DoT effect for 10%/20% over ~6 seconds. (Not only would this be good for damage, but as a DoT it'd do all the things other DoTs do: Lacerate's TA refund, Culling, Cull, etc.)

Actually, we're reliant on a 2-minute cooldown to function. It's called "Cloaking Screen"; a 1-minute cooldown would be an improvement. Without it, then no matter how awesome our initial burst is, we'll die in the process of using our attacks. So even if our burst was absolutely guaranteed to kill our target (which it's not), it'd still be a 1-for-1 exchange to use it as we'd be dead soon after. We'd kill the other side's healer, his teammates would kill us, the end. So yes, we're reliant on a 2-minute cooldown (3-minute for Lethality types)... that becomes unusable if someone uses a DoT on us, or uses AoEs, or uses a stealth-detection ability... so even if the Jugg spec in question WERE completely limited by a 1-minute cooldown (which it's not), they'd still be better off than us. And again, that's assuming we can actually kill our intended target with our initial burst, and anyone who's actually played the game a little will know how many different ways there are to survive our burst and escape (or, in the case of tank classes, just ignore it outright and beat us down). So most of the time it's a 0-for-1 exchange... unless there's a huge disparity in gear, buffs, or levels, all of which are far less common post-1.1.

It's already been happening ever since 1.1 was released. Groups that explicitly advertise for "ranged DPS" have been happening for about a week now, and I've had two times when a group leader booted me from a pickup hardmode group once he saw I was an Operative. Even if it's not justified by the current state of the game, the perception is already becoming commonplace that we're a weak PvE spec, and it's only going to get worse once this next patch comes out. And I'm not even going to say that they're entirely wrong. I went through a hardmode today with a nicely balanced group, The Juggernaut would jump right into the pack of enemies, the Sorcerer and Mercenary would unload AoEs, and me? By the time I got into stabbing position, half the enemies were dead. Sure, I'd do impressive damage at close range, but I spent so much time getting TO that close range that it didn't feel like I was doing as much. (Okay, I did much better against boss mobs, or when I had time to get into position before the fight started, but still, I can see why others would think that ranged DPS is better.) My best utility was that I'd put two points into Incisive Action, which let me throw Kolto Injections when the healer started falling behind in one fight...

And in one line, you nicely sum up the problem. We took a big hit in the 1.1 patch, in that biochem stacking and such have been fixed. No one that I know is claiming that change shouldn't have been made, but there's no question that a nerf to the stacking of short-term damage boosts is disproportionately penalizing to burst DPS classes capable of controlling exactly WHEN their bursts occur. So yes, we took the hit harder than everyone else, even though it was a change to underlying mechanics and not a specific class nerf. The problem, though, is that the devs didn't give it any time to see whether that change was enough, or whether an imbalance still existed. 1.1.1 hit the test server a day or two after 1.1.0 went live, so there's no possible way they had any up-to-date data on whether Operatives were still too strong, especially given that there are really no level 50s on the Public Test Server (for lack of a copy function). And I don't see how ANY of their metrics could have justified the PvE side effects of an Acid Blade nerf, which makes this change especially hard to swallow for those of us who don't PvP often. Last night I went to do some Hard Modes, and the group leader's comment was that he hadn't seen any DPS Operatives in quite a while. I rarely see any of them around, either; quite a few Operatives I know respec'd to a healer build, because at least that'll stay in demand and no one's calling for a nerf of Operative healers. But Operatives were always in short supply, and it's just getting worse.

Nah, that honor still goes to SWG for its NGE overhaul, basically throwing the entire existing game out and remaking it from scratch to be a completely different type of game. What Bioware has done here is not THAT bad by comparison. But, it does mean that this game might move from "gotta keep playing this" down to "I'll play this until X comes out". If this change goes through as-is, then I'll really have lost any confidence in these devs' ability to make a good long-term game; there are already far too many things in the game that show a lack of experience, and I'm no longer confident Bioware will be able to fix those in a reasonable timeframe. It's not the first time I've seen this happen in an MMO...

Frankly, I think this is one area where the designers really dropped the ball. We spend all this time being able to customize our armors to exactly fit our character designs, where all sorts of appearance combinations are possible, and what happens? We get to the endgame and suddenly have to all wear a handful of premade armor sets, with no variation possible. My agent uses that purplish imperial officer tunic, combined with a grey-and-white lower robe that looks like a long skirt, and helmet graphics disabled, and my only options now that I'm 50 are to switch to some horrible orange/red trenchcoat look for PvE or the ridiculous metal armor stuff for PvP? I don't think so. The solution would be simple: Treat the set bonuses, and armor rating, as an Armoring mod. That is, if I get enough points to unlock a Rakata Enforcer chestpiece, there should be some NPC in the game that allows me to trade it for an Armoring 26 mod (purple, level 56) that counts towards the Enforcer set bonus. So, you'd still be able to wear the equipment with the visual style you'd always wanted, by slotting that armoring mod into your existing oranges. You can make this more difficult than the normal mod slot-n-play system; maybe you have to complete a certain daily mission to get an item needed to deconstruct one set item's armoring. Regardless, it'd be much better than the current setup. Even easier, just add those armoring mods to the vendors directly. Instead of spending X commendations to get a chestpiece, maybe you spend X/2 to get the armoring mod that'd go in said chestpiece. (X/2 because the chestpiece also gives you a custom Mod and Enhancement modification, so if you wanted to make your own orange be statistically identical, you'd need both.)

Right, because the only reason anyone could POSSIBLY have a problem with what's happening is if they're not any good at playing. Every MMO these days is easy mode compared to what we used to have to put up with in the first generations of the genre; it's hilarious to see what people now think of as "skill" in an MMO. A new MMO company (which is what Bioware really is, regardless of their experience making single-player RPGs) makes a lot of mistakes in their first product. It's inevitable, and isn't really worthy of comment. Most of these companies are willing to learn from their mistakes, but the really good ones are willing to learn from OTHER companies' mistakes as well and not make the really common mistakes in the first place. That's the part that's upsetting here; we've all seen MMOs that suffered from exactly the same sort of knee-jerk PvP balancing that we're seeing here, and none of this is new territory, but the hope was that Bioware, at least, would be smart enough to not immediately cave to everyone who whines about getting killed in scenarios where exactly that is supposed to happen. You can and should make balance changes as needed, but only after actually testing those changes well to ensure that nothing else breaks. And it shouldn't be too hard to get better ballpark balancing; after all, it's not like this game has any groundbreaking new mechanisms that could explain this failure; everything here has precedent. So, in their very first attempt to rebalance the game, they botch it this badly. Even if this change had no effect at all on my own characters, it's just not a good sign for the future, because it shows that there'll likely be many balance changes in the future that gut a class' abilities with minimal testing. Even if you felt that Operatives had been broken for a while, so little time has passed since 1.1's massive overhaul of Biochem stacking and such that it's impossible that they could have confirmed whether the Operative balance was so out of whack that it needed these upcoming changes as well.

Basically the same here. I don't PvP much, and if these changes go through then it's not even worth trying. PvE's no better; last night I was booted from two hard-mode FP groups because they'd rather have ranged DPS than our melee version. And just forget about operations... Maybe I'm getting too old for MMOs, but it's just really disturbing how much people at the top end have focused on very specific metrics for effectiveness, and anyone who doesn't meet those is worthless. I had one group leader last night boot me from the BT hard-mode because I didn't have any set armors and so he felt I was "undergeared", even with all of my armor using 23 purples. (Think about that: you can't get the sets without doing the HMs, and I wasn't welcome in the HMs because I didn't have a set...) If you create a game where only the best in each role is acceptable (true in most MMOs), and we're no longer going to be able to fulfill the one role we were intended for, then what did they THINK was going to happen?

The worrisome part of interviews like this isn't just that they're making large-scale changes to key abilities without giving us any way to test those changes objectively. The worrisome part isn't that all of the hundreds of suggestions we've made in this forum for alternatives appear to be falling on deaf ears, with not one single indication that any other options are being considered or that the devs even pondered the idea that something like the Acid Blade nerf is unnecessary. And it's not about how the least-played class is the first to take a major hit while everyone and his brother is running around playing two specific ACs that'll remain nameless. No, the part that worries me is that it sounds like the developers never had any real idea of what Operatives were supposed to actually do, both in PvP and PvE. We're getting nerfed for doing exactly what a stealth class is supposed to do, and we lack many of the tools needed to do even THAT job well. We're supposed to be the Scissors to the casters' Paper, but right now we've got an environment where both Paper and Rock are crushing Scissors with ease, and it's about to get quite a bit worse. I'm not the kind of person who rage-quits when my class gets nerfed. But we're already hitting a point where Operatives are being rejected from flashpoints and operations in PvE, because we bring nothing to the table that an Assassin doesn't do just as well (if not better). If we're supposed to be the class designed to take down the light armor types, in both PvP and PvE, then make us actually work that way. Give us better immunities to all those CC effects the others can use to keep us from getting into melee range, and give us some sort of ability to prevent our chosen targets from immediately activating two items and a couple instacast abiltiies to get away from our initial burst. If those extras come at the cost of a bit of our burst damage, then so be it.

Pretty much this. Operatives, when in EXACTLY the right situation, could kill certain types of opponents 1-on-1 (and even then only if the person didn't know how to counter it) and then would easily die to that person's teammates. Whereas, there are several other classes that, while they lack the burst, have more than enough raw power and utility to stay effective even in the WRONG situations. I'm not opposed to removing some of the Conceal Op's burstiness, as long as other changes are made (either to us or to other classes) to allow a new role for us in PvP. But there's been absolutely nothing like that even hinted at by the devs. We've made tons of suggestions, and haven't heard any indication that anyone was listening.

Same here. Simply put, my Agent sees herself as a true professional; when she gives her word to a contact or asset, she keeps it regardless of what the Sith might want. After all, who would ever want to become an asset for the Sith Empire if you knew they'd kill you for it, out of convenience? So if I've told the asset that I'll protect her in exchange for information, I won't just kill her once I have it. Conversely, there are a few missions where your Sith contact is the RATIONAL one, while the alternative is often some sort of racist (anti-alien) military type who wants you to throw away a potential asset for no reason. So really, what it boils down to is that in a lot of cases, there are basically two choices: the "rational" one that corresponds to the actions of a sensible profesional, and a clearly irrational alternative. Sometimes the former is Light and the latter is Dark (the irrational choice being cruelty just for the heck of it), sometimes it's reversed (where the Light choice involves helping your enemies for no reason). This is why it makes no sense to dedicate yourself to a pure-Light or pure-Dark strategy; as I mentioned before, there's not enough internal consistency to do so.

After thinking about it a bit more, I think one thing that would REALLY help is a very simple change: have Kolto Infusion not link to the GCD. That way, it becomes the "oh crap" heal you can throw the moment you notice a problem, without having to interrupt your normal cycles. Now, realistically this should not be part of the base power itself, but instead be caused by a Talent in the fourth or fifth tiers (i.e., right as you're starting to reach Surgical Probe, which currently fills its niche). The only question is whether the game engine can allow you to do two separate casting actions at once; all of the powers that currently ignore the GCD are instacast. While you could also make said Talent turn Infusion into an instacast power, that might be a bit too much of a boost.

Uhh... they do. You did know about the PTS, right? Here, go read this thread in the Public Test Server forum. The PTS is hidden by default, but you can easily enable it in your server list.